30 day campaign finance reports: Open City Council seats, part 2

Finishing up with City Council candidates. Part One, for the other open seats, is here. July reports for F, J, and At Large #5 are here, and for At Large #4 are here. All of the finance reports that I have downloaded and reviewed are in this Google folder. Except for the reports that were filed non-electronically, which you can find here. Erik Manning’s invaluable spreadsheet remains my source for who’s in what race.


Candidate     Raised      Spent     Loan     On Hand
====================================================
Thomas        31,040     13,401        0      28,433
Huynh         21,600     20,599    9,500           0 
G Nguyen         740      1,001        0      19,981
Nelson         2,385      3,100        0       1,678
Zamora             0        305        0           0
R Nguyen

Adriatico     27,606     25,393   22,000      19,129
Cuellar       21,300     14,297        0      36,069
Curtis        15,105     11,867        0       7,639
Pollard       13,051     30,277   20,000      17,226
Rodriguez     10,069     10,070        0      10,620
Galvan           200        695        0         200
Patterson

Baldwin      110,394     38,562        0      52,074
Hellyar       49,841     36,372        0      32,763
Dolcefino     15,355      9,002        0       7,112
Plummer        9,834     23,490        0      32,139
Hausman        5,845      8,654        0       2,098
Bastida        1,103         51      200         750
McCrutcheon        0          0   34,000         150
Joseph
Laney
Rowe
Gonzalez

Alcorn        71,421     66,284        0      258,320
Woods          9,791      7,624        0            0
McNeese        9,705     13,606   30,000        3,305
Flowers        8,015     12,471    2,987        2,157
Rivera         2,335      1,732        0          602
Dick           1,435     93,248   75,000        1,435
Bonton           200     10,005   20,000       20,000
Batteau            0          0        0            0

We know that fundraising is not destiny. Especially in races where no one raises enough money to really do effective outreach, other factors (which most definitely include random luck) will affect the outcome. Plus, not all fundraising hauls are equal. A large number of small donations beats a small number of large donations, as that indicates breadth of support, and while all candidates can and do tap their personal networks, donations from within the city or district are worth more than donations from people elsewhere. You get the idea.

With all that said, we can draw some broad if shallow conclusions here. Tiffany Thomas has been the strongest fundraising in F from the beginning. Van Huynh has done a good job since July – he entered too late to have a July report – but apparently doesn’t have any cash on hand. His report leaves that field blank, and that figure can get fuzzy when a candidate also writes his own check. As for Giang “John” Nguyen, he reported $20K raised in July with the absurd amount of $8 in expenditures. He apparently hasn’t spent much more, so despite not taking in anything significant he’s still got almost $20K in the bank. You know how baseball fans say that at any given game you’ll see something you’ve never seen before? Reviewing city election campaign finance reports is kind of like that.

District J looks pretty wide open. It’s rare to see a race where nearly everyone has at least raised some decent amount of money. I would not take any bets on who might make that runoff.

At Large #4 and #5 follow more familiar patterns. Bill Baldwin was a late entrant in #4 but has done well since then. I wouldn’t call that enough money to really get your name out citywide, but he has the potential to get there. He lives and has his office in my neighborhood so many people around here know him. I’ve seen a respectable number of Baldwin signs, and a couple of signs that say “Don’t vote for Bill Baldwin in At Large #4”, which amuses me. There are also signs for Tiko Hausman, who lives in the First Ward but has been a fixture in the PTAs at Travis and Hogg. Nick Hellyar and Letitia Plummer have gotten the lion’s share of the endorsements. Insert shrug emoji here.

Sallie Alcorn has dominated fundraising in At Large #5 from the jump, and she has the most endorsements. Ashton Woods has a few, and no one else has more than one. She’s in a similar position to Abbie Kamin in C – do you spend a bunch now to maximize your chances of getting into the runoff, or do you hold back and hope to overwhelm whoever your runoff opponent is, assuming you get there? I say fire your shot now and let tomorrow take care of itself, but there’s room for debate.

That’s it for the city elections. I will not have the capacity to review 8 day reports, but I’ll probably at least take a look at the Mayoral numbers. As always, I hope this has been helpful. I’ll have HISD and HCC reports up soon.

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One Response to 30 day campaign finance reports: Open City Council seats, part 2

  1. Jennifer says:

    Has anyone done a google trend search of these candidates to see who is trending? The results are shocking.

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